Orhan Pamuk- My Name is Red

Historical novel

My Name is Red (Benim Adım Kırmızı) is a Turkish novel by Nobel laureate author Orhan Pamuk. It won the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003 as well as the French Prix du meilleur livre étranger and Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour awards in 2002.

The main characters in the novel are miniaturists in the Ottoman Empire, and the events revolve around the murder of one of the painters, as related in the first chapter. From then on Pamuk -- in a postmodern style reminiscent of Borges -- plays with and teases the reader and literature in general.

The novel's narrator changes in every chapter, and in addition to character-narrators, the reader will find unexpected voices such as the corpse of the murdered, a coin, several painting motifs, and the color red. The novel blends mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles, opening a window on the reign of OttomannSultan Murat III during nine snowy winter days in the Istanbul of 1591.

Enishte Effendi, the maternal uncle of Black, is reading the Book of the Soul by Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, a famous Sunni commentator on the Qur'an and continuous references are made to it throughout the book. The novel opens with master Elegant Effendi having been murdered but his soul lingering in the after-life and Elegant Effendi reflecting on the after-life. Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya’s Book of the Soul (Kitab al-Ruh) ranks among the best books on the subject of the Islamic understanding of life after death according to the Qur’an, the Sunna, and the doctrine of the Salaf and the Four Imams, proposing that the dead hear the living and know of them.

Pamuk compares illustrations with the afterlife in the sense that people aspire to achieve a sense of eternity through both. Thus Shekure imagines to speak to us readers like the women on illustrations look at her. ... just like those beautiful women with one eye on the life within the book and one eye on the life outside, I, too, long to speak with you who are observing me from who knows which distant time and place. The murdered Elegant Effendi accused his murderer of sacrilegious illustrations offending Allah or God. Is true art an expression of the individual artist or is true art a close to perfect representation of the divine in which the individual artist has succeeded to overcome his personal vanity? This question becomes a question of existential meaning in Pamuk's tale. And lie the truth and the answer to this question in reality or in our imagination?